


Wondrous Deep

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Clyde Waters - Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer (Song), Drowned Lovers (Traditional Scottish Ballad)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Logic, Murder, Passing Mention of Abortifacients, Sibling Incest, Unplanned Pregnancy, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24141640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: Ten meetings at a river, in various seasons and circumstances.
Relationships: Margaret/William (Drowned Lovers)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Wondrous Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reine_des_corbeaux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts).



> Based on [this arrangement of "Clyde Waters" (Childe Ballad 216)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YSqJN_MAQw) by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer.

The first time Willie and Margaret met by the Clyde, the water was the barest runnel: a trickle that barely slid over the rocks beneath it. Margaret was gone a-maying, and had her apron bunched full of apple blossoms and dogwood. When Willie saw her first through the thick of the trees, he took her for the doe he had been following. She was slender and quick, and trod light as an animal where she stepped on the grass.

Their eyes met across the stream, and Margaret stepped over. She asked where he was bound, and he told her he was bound nowhere. He did not leave until she gave him a flower, but he did not ask one of her.

\--

_The first time that Janet and Elayne met by the Clyde, the water was the barest runnel: a trickle that barely slid over the rocks beneath it. Both were gone a-maying, and they had no care for the call of crows and magpies in the trees above them. Janet laughed and plucked five green birch twigs to throw behind her, trying to conjure the name of a lover or husband._

_They did not speak to one another of the youth both had met in the meadow, nor did they speak to hopes or to promises that either might meet him again. They were maids who had no better secrets yet to hide. Once parted, neither spoke until some days later, when Elayne was sitting amidst a swath of unbloomed rue, weeping disconsolately as she waited for an appointment that had not been kept._

\--

The second time Willie and Margaret met by the Clyde, the water was some ways deep: slow and sluggish, but with room enough that frogs and other cool-blooded things might breed there. William was not riding that day, and Margaret did not hear him until his boot splashed into the stream behind her. She looked up and bade him good morrow.

They sat that afternoon together, until the sunlight set a gold cast upon the newly-flowered rowan. They spoke of households bereft of fathers and made a study of one another’s face and form. Willie said he would return the next day to see her again, and she gave him a long lock of her flaxen hair, which she braided alongside a lock of his own until they two were interwoven into one cord--the hue of one indistinguishable from the other.

\--

_The second time that Janet and Elayne met by the Clyde, the water was some ways deep: slow and sluggish, but with room enough that one might lose a coin or charm dropped there without care. Elayne’s face was grey as the overcast sky above them, although Janet’s was still red with new crying. They spoke of the man in the meadow now, for there were deeper secrets between them. For all their deceiver's fine words, neither secret was a coming marriage._

_When Elayne asked if Janet knew where her father’s sword was kept, she said she did not. She said she would ask it of him, however. She had a talent for casting voices, and could play at being the boy he charged with keeping it keen._

\--

The third time Willie and Margaret met by the Clyde, it was a swift passing stream, and Margaret had to cling fast to the boughs of a half-fallen tree to make it across. Willie said that she looked like some nymph of the wood, her hair unbound and her pale cheek blowsy with the exertion of her short journey.

They spoke less this time, but spent a long afternoon in rapt contemplation on the other: tracing the constellations of freckles across one another’s skin as they found every subtle way in which their bodies were fitted to one another. Margaret walked the long path back home in graying dusk that evening, the sleeves of her cambric gown stained green and the edge of her shift blotted with red.

\--

_The third time that Janet and Elayne met by the Clyde, it was a swift passing stream, and both girls were fretful as to whether it was safe to entrust their cargo to it. Janet put stones about the corpse where she could: in his sleeves, in his belt, in his purse. Even when it all seemed well and neatly done, she took one last rock--a large one--and battered it deep within a mouth that could tell no lies now, tearing the side of his cheek and cracking a tooth in the process._

_Elayne said nothing, for she was suddenly taken by those pains that came upon some women earlier than others. She had been well shortly beforehand, however, when she had cut from each of their deceiver's forearms a strip of winding white skin. As she rolled the flesh close between mullein leaves, she had told Janet that she’d learned surer ways to conjure husbands._

_\--_

The fourth time Willie and Margaret met by the Clyde, it was a broad river with a quick current, and Willie had to coax his steed into making the crossing. Margaret spoke of fears she had not yet breathed to the new autumn air, and he clapped her close to him afterwards, tight enough she thought she might bruise further at his touch. She wept soft as he held her, and asked him about the stars under which he was born.

He made his reply and she cried full sore then. He wrapped her in his cloak and gave her back the band of double gold she had gifted him once before. She kissed him on the eyes and on the brow, and swore to him that he should rest his head in her hair once more in some summer yet to come. 

\--

_The fourth time that Janet and Elayne met by the Clyde, it was a broad river with a quick current, and Elayne marveled to see the track of her son’s horse cut from one bank to the other. As for Janet, she marveled to see Elayne across the stream, and she thought as to how heavy the years had fallen upon them both._

_They spoke then: of secrets, of promises, of children who had survived prayer and pennyroyal to grow to a wild and hot-blooded youth. They were in agreement as to where their course must run now, even if both felt heartsore to think of any child believing a true lover false._

\--

The fifth time Willie and Margaret met by the Clyde, it was a great stretch that ran wondrous strong and might have sent the boldest knight riding back from its banks.

Willie, however, had not ridden back from it. It is known widely now what happened after.

\--

_The fifth time that Janet and Elayne met by the Clyde, the water was the barest runnel: as if a great watery maw had closed over its catch and left but a dribble to pour down its lips. The cap and coat that lay sodden on the bank had been muddied over to the point that they seem as if they had grown--like mushrooms--in last night’s rain._

_The two women looked at one another, eyes meeting before their hands did. When they wept there with one another, it was surely no surprise that their tears did not swell the river thick again, and yet both clung to one another as men might in the fear of drowning._

**Author's Note:**

> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.
> 
> Thanks to K for the beta!
> 
> * * *
> 
> Using a strip of a corpse's skin as a love charm is a piece of actual folk belief, although it's Irish in origin rather than Scottish.


End file.
